On coffee bar-anthropology: In the latest edition of the Norwegian intellectual weekly Morgenbladet, a senior Norwegian anthropologist expresses her contempt for something she refers to as coffee-bar anthropology. First of all, given the simple fact that those attending coffee bars in any given society are as it happens humans, not automatons, and anthropology is according to my understandings about humans, it might of course be of interest to anthropologist to figure out what goes on there. Secondly, outstanding scholars of anthropology writing about Egypt such as my friends Samuli Schielke and Anouk de Koning has long since demonstrated that what goes on in coffee bars in Egypt can reveal quite a lot of substantial things about Egyptian society. And thirdly, I find it paradoxical that a senior Norwegian anthropologist who has as a matter of fact spent the last few years doing fieldwork among Egyptian hotel waiters in the luxury hotels in and around Midan Tahrir in Cairo in order to make the case for how fantastic authoritarian rule was and remains for Egypt and Egyptians in Norwegian mainstream media, and now keeps a studied silence about the rampant human rights abuses of General al-Sisis supposedly secular military dictatorship, and al-Sisis latest attack on the last remnants of academic freedom (you see, we actually only care about free speech and human rights for Egyptians when those threatening these are Islamists, not our beloved friends the secular dictators), should perhaps be a little more circumspect about coffee bar-anthropology in general. With apologies to those of my anthropological colleagues in Norway who think that colleagial cosiness is more important than scholarly integrity for my offenses against the former. newyorker/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-trash
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 06:01:08 +0000
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